Sunday, February 20, 2011

I’ve just bought a new computer and am in the process of setting it up. It’s a PC running Windows 7. Windows 7 doesn’t come with an email program installed, but it prompts you to download a package of free ‘essentials’. I wanted to get my email up and running quickly and was going to install just the email ‘essential’ program, but saw the blog writer program and decided to have a look.

Until now, I’ve only ever used the Blogger interface when writing up blog posts – or done my writing elsewhere and then cut and pasted. I was aware that there are desktop blogging packages around but had never looked into them. I am writing this as I explore and click on different options.

This particular package has a number of handy features not available in the blogger interface for those of us who can’t be bothered to learn html. Such as subscripts1 and superscripts2 and tables. I could see myself using superscripts if I wanted to get all footnotey. There have also been times when I would have added a table if I had been able to do so quickly.

Oh look - emoticons. Are emoticons ‘me’? Nah, I don’t think so.

There’s a button for adding maps. Here is a map which shows Bung Bong where my Bennett family lived for a time and Amherst where they went to hospital.

The maps don’t have many customisation options. I don’t like that the scale has to be in miles. Australia went metric before I was born so miles takes a bit of extra effort for me to interpret.

There are extra options when you add a hyperlink to another post, for example you can set the software to automatically add a hyperlink the first time a particular term appears in a post. I tried it with Trove and it worked fine. It’s also easy to link to one of your own previous posts as the software will give you a drop down list to choose from. I’m really starting to like this!

Do you use the interface in your blogging platform, or some other software to blog? What software do you use? I’d be interested to know what other bloggers do.

9 comments:

I use blogger edit screen for the most part, sometimes I will write in Word Perfect, then copy/paste.

But, I have heard that Live Writer is a great way to go. Maybe I'll just have to cave in and try it! Sounds like you like it a lot on first try. That says a lot for software as far as I am concerned. I don't like long learning curves.

Interesting. I write within the Blogger screen most of the time, but do find longer blogs hard to work with there. Those I've done in my word processing program and transferred. I'm a Mac user, but just bought a Windows pc for travel. Looking forward to trying this out. Love the idea of easily incorporating maps - and of course the emoticons!

I have mostly been writing in WordPress and have sometimes found it limiting - though not limiting enough to go looking for options. I have a new Windows computer myself and just now have set up Live Writer. I look forward to playing with it. Thanks for the push!

If I am inserting a photo I use Blogger's 'compose' window because it seems to be the quickest way to position or resize an image. Otherwise I usually write the HTML code in a text editor, then copy/paste into Blogger's 'Edit HTML' window and check that the online layout is what I intended. (I am so glad that I taught myself HTML. I can change or add to my Web site whenever I want, and it costs nothing except my time!)

I use the blogger interface but get annoyed with its limitations. I especially dislike the way it inserts extra lines into some of my posts and then, when I look at the html, I cannot find the code to remove.

I would also love the automatic hyperlinking tool.

Just discovered that Live Writer is available for XP - will download and give it a go.

I have mostly been writing in WordPress and have sometimes found it limiting - though not limiting enough to go looking for options. I have a new Windows computer myself and just now have set up Live Writer. I look forward to playing with it. Thanks for the push!